Three Long Weeks — A Stress Bucket Diary — by Juno

Juno is an increasingly famous dog blogger. She has followers now from three continents, and a few from the Twilight Zone. Enjoy.

Welcome to my personal stress-bucket diary. I know, I know; you see me prancing around and cannot imagine that stress is part of my four-pawed life. But apparently it is. Change it seems, is necessary. See my/our plan below:

Some people go on diets; others take up fitness programmes. Such disciplines are intended to improve physical health. I require none of these, but am told, by some, that I need to seek the balm of calm. I need to reduce personal stress. Now at the age of four years, it’s time to re-invent myself emotionally.

Lately I have become very anxious when visitors arrive on the doorstep, even people I know well. Apparently I make quite a lot of noise, mostly barking, with the occasional low-level growl. Prancing pony becomes Sid-Vicious. I am not angry when I meet these intruders; they do, however, somehow wind me up despite the friendliest of their efforts. I am told that the situation is not acceptable so I have agreed to participate in a stress-bucket challenge, something like a three-week mindfulness-type  programme; meditation here I come.

Now one week into the project, MaPaw and I are training, training, training. This alone causes me some angst but I am willing to “take one for the team.” We are temporarily avoiding the local dog park (hope it’s still there when I return) and taking a vacation from therapy-dog team work. The aim is to reduce activity, and hopefully, stress. I mean why should MaPaw and PawPa be the sole carriers of stress? Squirrels, not interested. Ducks, geese, quail . . . unappealing; I shall mind my own business. Gophers, rabbits, and garden snakes; find your own dance partners.

Rather than chase the myriad sounds of creation it’s Mozart, Mantovani and mindfulness for me. Breathe . . . stretch . . . relax . . . contemplate. No more barking at tall dark-clothed male visitors. No more challenging Purolator drivers. Birds in the air, cars on the road, neighbours in the condo below us; all are now irrelevant to my bucolic self.

Breathe . . . relax . . . everything is beautiful. Ahh . . .

You say you didn’t know that dogs experience stress? Here are some notes from our canine shrink:

Every dog has a stress bucket. No matter the size of the dog, each one is an individual and so is the size of their bucket. Our dog’s bucket gets filled every day with both positive and negative events. Exciting things like high energy play, scary things or things that startle our dogs and even their health like soreness, itchiness or stomach upsets all pay into the bucket. And at some points when the bucket fills to the point of overflowing our dogs will react in some way. Depending on your dog, an overflowing bucket may show up as barking, lunging, having a harder time settling, not making the best choices or even being a bit huffy. It’s really no different than when we’ve had a super busy day/week and things are coming at us left and right at some point we’re going to explode or have a meltdown.

My word, I had no idea all this was going on between my ears and down through to my wagging tail. Of course, many humans are unaware of the tool stress takes on their lives. Clergy seem especially vulnerable to such misunderstanding.

So here’s my advice. Do what you can to reduce stress in your life. Seek help where available. We’re in this together. Wish me luck in the remaining two weeks of my programme. I will report back from time to time.

Juno